Orlando International's busy summer aligns with forecasts for all-time high in summer air travel

Orlando International Airport is bracing for a summer first, with enough flights scheduled to handle more than 6 million arriving passengers.

Seat capacity for summer, defined as June, July and August, is up 7.8 percent compared to last year, said Carolyn Fennell, the airport's spokeswoman.

If Orlando International continues to run at 87 percent capacity, as it has for the last 12 months, that means more than 10.5 million passengers would travel through the airport this summer.

The increases at Orlando International align with industry forecasts projecting this summer to have an all-time high for travel.

Airlines for America, an industry trade organization, said about 231 million passengers are expected to fly on U.S. airlines from June through August. Last year, about 222 million passengers traveled during the same time period, according to Airlines for America.

"We saw airfares fall throughout 2015, and that trend continued in the first three months of 2016," said John Heimlich, Airlines for America's vice president and chief economist. "As airlines compete for passengers across an increasing portfolio of markets, air travel is becoming increasingly affordable and accessible."

Fennell said if the travel projections are correct, Orlando International would end summer with an annual passenger count of more than 41 million people on a 12-month rolling calendar.

Those numbers would be enough for airport leaders to move forward with the proposed south terminal expansion project.

In December, members of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority established a threshold that needed to be met before they would greenlight the project.

They said Orlando International had to have six steady months of airport traffic totaling 38.5 million passengers on a rolling 12-month calendar. That figure, so far, was hit in January, February and March.

April passenger figures have not been released.

In March, authority leaders approved the project's funding but said they still needed to meet the threshold before moving forward into construction. The first phase of construction could open as soon as 2019 and would include between 16 and 21 new gates, depending on the size of planes landing there. That project would cost $1.8 billion.

The entire expansion, which would add 120 new gates at OIA, is expected to take about 25 years.